This wiki is no longer updated. It is posted here for archival purposes only.
External links are NOT be fixed.  The contents of this wiki are as such was on October 31, 2013.
The wiki used to be hosted at https://ict4empl.wikispaces.com/

Definitions


For this purposes of this study, the term volunteer refers to any person who is donating labour to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, community organisations, etc. The term does includes anyone undertaking such unpaid work regardless of their motivation for doing so.

We also acknowledge that there is no universally-accepted definition of the term volunteer, and that some organizations have a more narrow, or a more broad, view of who is and isn't a volunteer.

In this study, the term internet-mediated volunteering refers to the donation of labour to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, community organisations etc., where an online system (accessed through a computer, a mobile device, etc.) plays a key role in recruitment, facilitating access to tasks, and conducting that task.

Other terms for internet-mediated volunteering include:
  • virtual volunteering (and variations such as virtual volunteers)
  • online volunteering (and variations such as online volunteers)
  • evolunteering (and variations such as e-volunteering, e-volunteers, etc.)
  • digital volunteers, digital volunteering
  • e-mentoring (and variations such as online mentors, online mentoring, telementoring, etc.)
  • español: voluntarios virtuales, voluntarios en línea, voluntarios digitales, voluntarios en red
  • français: L’e-bénévolat, bénévolat virtuel, bénévolat enligne, bénévolat Internet
  • Polish: e-wolontariat
  • Italiano: virtuali volontariato, digitali volontariato, volontari digitali
  • português: voluntários digitais
  • Catalan: voluntariat virtual, voluntaris digitals, voluntariat virtual
  • Deutsch: digitales Ehrenamt, virtuelles Ehrenamt
  • Deutsch: Online-Freiwilligenarbeit
  • Deutsch: Freiwilliges Online-Engagement
  • microvolunteering (and variations such as micro-volunteering, microvolunteers, etc.)
  • microtasking
  • micro work
  • crowdsourcing
  • wisdom of the crowd
  • crowd computing
  • distributed computing
  • distributed development
  • distributed thinking
  • hive mind
  • smart mob
  • virtual community of practice
  • virtual management
  • virtual teams
  • virtual workforce
  • Internet-mediated volunteering

Internet-mediated volunteering can be similar to telecommuting, except that, instead of online employees who are paid, these are volunteers who are not paid, and they are working to benefit a non-governmental organization, charity, or other not-for-profit entity, as opposed to a for-profit business. Or it can be thought of as unpaid microtasking or crowdsourcing, where people don't make an ongoing commitment to the cause, non-governmental organization or charity they help online.

With all of that said, we also acknowledge that all of these are contested terms, and there is not universal agreement in their definitions or how they are a part (or not a part) of the greater volunteering landscape.

People engaged in virtual volunteering undertake a variety of activities from locations remote to the organization or people they are assisting, via a computer or other Internet-connected device, such as:

Online micro-volunteering is also an example of virtual volunteering and crowdsourcing, where volunteers undertake assignments via their PDAs or smartphones. These volunteers either aren't required to undergo any screening or training by the nonprofit for such tasks, and do not have to make any other commitment when a micro-task is completed, or, have already undergone screening or training by the nonprofit, and are therefore approved to take on micro-tasks as their availability and interests allow. Online micro-volunteering was originally called "byte-sized volunteering" by the Virtual Volunteering Project, and has always been a part of the more than 30-year-old practice of online volunteering.[4[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_volunteering#cite_note-3|]]] An early example of both micro-volunteering and crowdsourcing is ClickWorkers, a small NASA project begun in 2001 that engaged online volunteers in scientific-related tasks that required just a person's perception and common sense, but not scientific training, such as identifying craters on Mars in photos the project posted online; volunteers were not trained or screened before participating.

History of Internet-mediated volunteering


Internet-mediated volunteering is not a new concept, - the practice has been widespread for many years. It has been going on probably as long as there has been an Internet (which itself is more than 30 years old [1] ).

The first instance of deliberately organising online volunteers to benefit a cause is probably Project Gutenberg[2] , a global volunteer effort that began in 1971 to digitize, archive and distribute written cultural works. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books, such as works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. These works continue to be typed in and proofread by online volunteers[3] .

Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, made an online appearance at the United Nations Open Day in Geneva in 2001, during which he noted the role online volunteers had played in his development of the Web a decade earlier[4] .

In 1995, a then-new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of virtual volunteering[5] , a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online's co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation [6] to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the United States. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the Web site was launched in early 1997[7] . After one year, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became VolunteerMatch.

The first two years of the Virtual Volunteer Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals and existing volunteer management recommendations with regard to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were involving online volunteers. By April 1999, almost 100 organizations around the world had been identified by the Project as involving online volunteers and were listed on the Project's Web site. By the end of 1999, as the numbers grew exponentially, the Project stopped listing every organization involving online volunteers and instead identified only those organizations with large or unique online volunteering programs. The Project used its research about these organizations to continually create and refine guidelines for engaging and supporting online volunteers.

In the last part of the first decade or our current century, microvolunteering became a popular form of virtual volunteering – online volunteers under-taking very quick, small tasks, usually requiring little specialized expertise, such as tagging photos or trying out a new online resource for even just a few minutes and providing feedback. While the practice of microvolunteering has always been a part of virtual volunteering and, therefore, is as old as the Internet, the name for the practice is relatively new (back in the 1990s, it was called it byte-sized volunteering by the Virtual Volunteering Project).

Here is the final paper.

Wiki Contents

  1. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
  2. ^ http://www.gutenberg.org
  3. ^ Most online volunteers that support Project Gutenberg now do so under the auspices of Distributed Proofreaders, http://www.pgdp.net
  4. ^ "Results so far," United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS), http://www.communications.com/unites/results.html
  5. ^ Green, Marc (Fall, 1995). "Fundraising in Cyberspace: Direct email Campaigns, Virtual Volunteers, Annual Fund Drives Online. Does the Information Superhighway lead to new horizons or a dead end?", The Grantsmanship Center Magazine, The Grantsmanship Center.
  6. ^ http://www.irvine.org
  7. ^ Cravens, Jayne (February 2001). "who funds the virtual volunteering project?", The Virtual Volunteering Project, University of Texas at Austin.

--end of original wiki content--

If you are interested in virtual volunteering, not just as it applies to Europe but as it is undertaken worldwide, please see the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which continues to be updated.

For more information on how organizations can leverage Internet-mediated volunteering, see:

The ICT4EMPL wiki is now hosted by Jayne Cravens, who is also its author. She is NOT an employee of the European Commission.

For information on the ICT4EMPL project not already covered in this blog, for information regarding the future of the project, or for information on any European Commission projects, contact jrc-ipts-is-NEWS@ec.europa.eu

Return to ICT4EMPL wiki home page.